MAN. 311 



(oj- feet) and weighs about 200 pounds. Its ordinary atti- 

 tude is like that of the chimpanzee; there is a web between 

 the first joints of all the fingers and three of the toes, and 

 both hands and feet are broadei', while the body is much 

 more robust than in the other apes, being very broad across 

 the shoulders. The span of the arms is to the height as 

 three to two, or a little over eight feet. Tiie skull is thick, 

 and the strength and ferocity of the creature is evinced by 

 the thick supra-orbital ridges and the high sagittal and 

 lambdoidal crests on the top of the skull; the face is wide 

 and long, the nose broad and flat, the lips and chin promi- 

 nent. The gorilla walks like the chimpanzee, though it 

 stoops less. It is very ferocious, bold, never running when 

 approached or attacked by man. It lives on a range of 

 mountains in the interior of Guinea, its habitat, so far as 

 known, extending from a little north of the Gaboon Eiver 

 to the Congo. 



Thus, to recapitulate, while tlie gibbons are most remote 

 from man, the orangs approach him nearest in the number 

 of the ribs, the form of the cerebral hemispheres, and other 

 less obvious characters; the chimpanzee is nearest related 

 to him in the form of the skull, the dentition, and tlie pro- 

 portions of the arms, while the gorilla resembles him more 

 in the proportions of the leg to the body, of the foot to the 

 hand, in the size of the heel, the curvature of the spine, the 

 form of the pelvis, and the absolute capacity of the skull 

 (Huxley). Anatomists have and do differ as to whether 

 the chimpanzee or the gorilla is nearest to man. 



Whetlier man {Homo sapiens Linn.), when considered 

 simply as an animal, is the representative of a distinct sub- 

 class, order, sub-order, or family, is and may never be set- 

 tled; though the tendency among zoologists is to leave 

 him among the Primates, where he was placed by Linnteus. 

 When we consider the slight absolute anatomical differences 

 separating man from the apes, and take into account the 

 great variations in form between the different genera of 

 apes, and still more in the monkeys, it seems best, throw- 



